Do as I say, not as I do. This is the standard coaching refrain. We expect the people we coach to put our instructions into practice. We demonstrate by our words not our actions. This can be for a number of reasons:

They’re better at it than we are

We can’t do it that way

We cant do it that way any more

We don’t do that way because we do it in an engrained way we can’t or won’t get out of

We do a short-cut version of it because we know it inside out but we need them to learn all the steps and how the steps relate to each other before they’re good enough to expedite the whole thing

This is a tough ask in coaching because we’re trying to lead by words, not by our actions which is the standard way to inspire people. At some point every coach will hit this if the people they’re coaching become better at it than they currently are. That’s what you want as a coach, at least a good one.

In business this is slightly different. We’re supposed to coach rather than manage, otherwise our direct reports don’t get a chance to learn it for themselves and grow into the role, eventually expanding beyond it. In business you can’t expect to instruct someone how to follow a process and then not follow the process yourself. Chances are they won’t follow the process you want them to and they won’t respect you either.

The answer, in sports as well as business, in fact in everything as well as business, is to come clean and be honest. ‘I don’t do this myself because [insert honest reason] but I’m advising you to do it this way because it is the best way, and you will get the best results from it.’ Then you have to let their actions, and their results, do the talking.

I used to work for a CEO who would give his considered feedback thus, ‘So Paul, just a few thoughts…’

I’ve expressed my dislike of the word ‘just’ before, but in this case it is well used. Coming from your CEO, ‘just a few thoughts’ could be translated into one of two ways. First, it’s ‘here are a few things you need to do to this version before I’m happy with it.’ The second is ‘here’s my feedback, your call on what you do to improve the document.’

How you interpret those few thoughts depends, of course, on you, your boss, and your working relationship. Do you have genuine autonomy, and work for someone who’s leadership style is the right blend of genuine delegation and guidance? Or do you work for someone who prefers to sign everything off and in effect has a more micro-managing style? If either is the case, what do you need to stop doing, start doing or continue doing to progress?

Over time we learn the style of the people we report into it and we become finely attuned to how they operate, what their values are, and what’s important to them. When we work successfully with them we’re effectively selling to them. I used to work with another CEO who would repeatedly say ‘yes’ at breaks in the flow while I was pitching an idea or a project to him. I used to call it the ‘yes that means no’. I knew that he was not with me and I needed to re-approach differently or pick another battle.

When you ask your CEO for feedback on a second version, and you get the ‘just a few more thoughts,’ well, then you’re probably running out of time…

This seemingly innocuous post is, as it turns out, a very important post for me, perhaps the most important in a long time. And I don’t mean for me in an ‘in my opinion’ sense; I mean for me personally.

I have a theory. It goes like this. There are leaders. They’re leaders in their field. We see them on screen, we hear about them or listen to them, we read about them. They might be sports people, musicians, business people, artists, inventors politicians, not-for-profit innovators, entrepreneurs. They might be the best at something that we do for leisure. They’re 1 in a 100, maybe more.

Then there are us. The rest of us. We’re the other 99, or 999, making up the overwhelmingly huge majority of the seething mass of humankind. We’re not the best at any one thing, so we don’t get watched, written about or listened to.

Yet almost all the external stimuli in the world come from the 1%, are about the 1%, intended for the consumption of the 99%. It lets us into the world of the 1% and encourages us to strive to join that elite club and leave the world of the also rans behind. More importantly, it’s our consumption of the 1%’s activities that provide the economics for the rich and famous to be rich and famous. The model doesn’t work otherwise.

What are we to do about this? Should we do anything?

This topic has preoccupied me for a long time. Actually, a very long time. For some of that very long time I’ve been turning my thoughts into a book which explores the topic in detail. But for now, I think it’s a fascinating conundrum.